


She's a Rainbow

by mothmandalore



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Jealousy, Lack of Communication, Rating May Change, Regret, Tags May Change, basically Alan shouldn't be allowed to talk, but oops there he goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28265298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothmandalore/pseuds/mothmandalore
Summary: Alan Tracy has a way with ladies.(Mind you, nobody ever said it was a particularly proficient way.)---A little fic following the romance that blossoms between Alan and Tin-Tin, in spite of Alan’s best efforts.
Relationships: Tin-Tin Kyrano/Alan Tracy
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	1. the sky in front of you

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/160099752@N07/50750847708/in/dateposted/)

It’s dawn when Thunderbird 2 finally touches down, slowing to a crawl in the cavernous hangar. The sky is just starting to fade from deep blue to dusky purple, and the barest hint of sunlight is blushing over the horizon, painting the sea gold.

“Look at that sunrise,” Virgil says, locking the controls. There’s a wistful sigh teasing the edges of his words, a kind of reverence as he lingers before closing the hangar doors. “Don’t get to see those often enough.”

“Mhm.” Alan glances up at the sky, stretching in the copilot chair. He lets out a heavy yawn, and he twists his torso, cracking an angry joint in his back. 

Virgil blanches at the sound. “You know you’re gonna get arthritis if you keep doing that,” he mutters. 

“Probably.” Alan pops another too-tight joint in his neck, rubbing at a knotted muscle. He grins as he watches Virgil’s complexion grow a little paler. The noise is one of the few things that get under his big brother’s skin.

“Come on now,” Virgil says, turning away. He looks back out at the sky one last time, at the growing color kissing the edges of the island. “Tell me you don’t appreciate that. It’s like rose gold on the water.”

“I’d  _ appreciate  _ getting off this rig and into bed.” Alan spins his chair around, hopping out. “That was a long flight. Didn’t even get to stretch my legs.”

“Yeah…poor little guy.” The flight deck grows a little darker as the hangar door covers the last sliver of morning sky. Virgil follows him through the bridge. “You must be exhausted.”

Alan rolls his eyes as the door opens to the docking bay. As usual, it’s a cacophony of pumping hydraulics and whirring engines. Any snappy comeback would be lost beneath the din of the mechanisms - a tragedy, as far as Alan’s concerned. He’ll save the sniping for later. 

Right now, all he wants to do is sleep, long and hard. It wasn’t a difficult operation, really...everything was by the book, in and out as quick and as clean as they could have hoped. Each  _ i  _ dotted and each  _ t  _ crossed. 

But even though Virgil’s having a laugh, he’s right. Alan’s exhausted _.  _ Tired straight down to his bones, in a way he’s never felt before. He’s trying not to think about  _ why  _ that is...why the whole rescue had him unsettled from the moment he heard Eddie Houseman’s name. 

Why the gears in his brain won’t stop turning, grinding against each other until sparks fly and his head throbs.

_ Sleep. _ That’s what he’s gonna think about, and nothing else. Not Eddie. 

Not the way Tin-Tin’s face lit up when he made her laugh. 

Not the way her laugh sounded, all bright and clear like a polished copper bell. 

Not the way she looked at him, at his dark hair and his sharp eyes and his chiseled jaw...

“It’s not even that great of a jaw,” he mutters, grinding his own perfectly ordinary jaw in a tight circle. 

“What’s that?” Virgil’s voice carries over the monotonous humming and clicking on the ride back to the lounge. 

Alan sighs, rubbing his hand over his tired face. “Don’t worry about it.”

_ Sleep.  _ Six good hours if he’s lucky. Hell, maybe even eight. Satellite relief’s coming up soon, and they’ll want him ready for-

“Oh, Alan!” The moment they set foot in the lounge, Grandma Tracy’s on him like a vulture. A very friendly vulture, pressing a cup of steaming hot tea into his hands, feeling his forehead, tutting under her breath. She shakes her head furiously. “I can’t believe you’d put yourself through all that! You had us worried half to death!”

He blinks. 

He takes a faltering step back, bumping against Virgil. 

“Through...all...” He looks down at the tea, then back up at Grandma, his face twisting with confusion. “Wait, what?”

“No, no, don’t talk.” She grabs his wrist, urging the mug up to his lips. “Drink that. It’s got plenty of honey in it.” She touches his temple again,  _ tsk _ ing. “Let me go find the thermometer.”

It’s not the standard greeting, that’s for sure. Scott isn’t peppering him with questions about equipment checks and calibrations. Gordon isn’t asking for the gritty details. His father isn’t even around for a debriefing.

Alan frowns, blinking again as the steam curls in front of his eyes. “What’s going on?“

“Not another word, Alan Tracy!” His grandmother bites off each word, her hands landing resolutely on her hips. “Not until you’ve finished every last drop of that!”

Her face is set in a look of steely determination, one he knows painfully well - so he takes a tentative sip, wincing at the bitter tea and the cloyingly sweet honey. Virgil comes to stand beside him, shifting uneasily.

“The...rescue went well…” Virgil says, very hesitantly, as if he can’t quite measure the room. Alan takes another sip of tea and scans the lounge. Tin-Tin and Scott are talking near the piano, glancing over at them. Gordon reclines on the couch, watching Virgil carefully. 

“No one was hurt,” Virgil continues. “Alan’s probably in better shape than all of us-“

Gordon shakes his head frantically, eyes widening. 

_ “Well,”  _ Grandma Tracy says loudly. “I’m thrilled the rescue went well, but I can’t imagine dragging this poor boy out in those conditions…”

Alan can’t help but bristle at that. He opens his mouth to speak, only to have the mug shoved up again. He jumps as tea splashes towards his nose. 

_ “Drink!”  _ She narrows her eyes, shaking her head. “And don’t you think about going anywhere but straight to bed. I’ll bring some medicine to your room.”

She scurries out of the lounge before he can get a word of protest in. Alan frowns, turning to Virgil. “What do you suppose that’s about?”

Virgil only shrugs. But there’s a loud, messy cough from the couch, a sound like garbled half-words.

_ “Yerseck.” _

Gordon’s sitting up straight now, watching Scott and Tin-Tin from the corner of his eye. Alan looks from Gordon to the two of them, then back again.

Alan blinks as Gordon thumps his chest a few times, then heavily clears his throat, muttering behind his fist.  _ “Yuhcottacold.” _

“Yukon...what?” Alan looks from Gordon to Virgil, his frown deepening. “Has everyone lost it?”

Virgil arches his eyebrow. He looks at the door Grandma Tracy hurried through. He looks at the mug clutched in Alan’s hand. He looks at Tin-Tin, still talking in a low voice with Scott. 

Then he smiles. A tight-lipped, wry smile. “Well, Alan, you heard grandmother.” His hand falls heavy on Alan’s shoulder, fingers digging in with just enough pressure to steer him away from the lounge. He raises his voice a little more than strictly necessary. “No more missions until you’ve gotten over that nasty bug. All that rain’s the last thing you needed.”

“Wha-“ Alan begins, but Virgil tightens his grip, shaking his head. Alan glances back over his shoulder as he’s led down the hallway. He catches one last sight of Tin-Tin, a worried frown on her lips, before he turns the corner.

Virgil grins when they’re out of sight. “I’m sorry to tell you that you’re apparently very ill, Alan. No idea how bad it is.”

“What are you  _ on  _ about?” He wrestles free of Virgil’s grip. “I feel perfectly fine.”

“For now, maybe. But...y’know...Tin-Tin did sound awfully concerned on that call earlier.”

Alan raises the mug to his lips, an automatic motion, and grimaces again at the taste. He’s always hated tea. “Yeah, she did. What of it?”

“So she sounded... _ awfully...concerned.”  _ Virgil enunciates each word carefully. He looks Alan up and down.

Alan’s brows knit together. “If someone doesn’t start making sense soon…”

Virgil sighs - long-suffering and heavy - and pushes Alan towards his bedroom door. “Concerned about  _ you.  _ The thought of you out on that mission while you were sick...that sure knocked Eddie right out of her mind, huh?”

Alan says “oh.”

Then his eyes widen, and Alan says “ _ oh!” _

“There you go.” Virgil plucks the mug from his hands. “Now you’d better get into bed and start looking like you’ve been hit by a train. Maybe a couple of trains. It sounds like grandmother’s been working overtime on this one.”

Alan rubs the back of his neck. “How exactly am I supposed to pull this off?”

“Try acting sympathetic.” He grins at Alan, all straight shining teeth. “You can manage that, can’t you? Dig deep, kid.”

* * *

It isn’t long before there’s a soft knock on the bedroom door. 

“Alan?” Tin-Tin’s voice is barely a whisper. “Are you awake?”

Alan sits up on his elbows, eyes locked on the door. “Yeah! Or...I mean…” He drops back against the pillows, lowering his voice. “Yeah. Come on in.”

He just saw her in the lounge a moment ago, but he still feels a strange little flutter in his chest when she opens the door. It’s like he almost forgets, sometimes, just how pretty she is.

But he can’t forget - he won’t ever- because he swears every last inch of her is etched into his brain. She moves so fluidly, almost dreamlike, as she walks towards him, carrying a tray. 

“Grandma Tracy told me all about your cold,” she says, setting it across his lap. She perches carefully on the side of the bed, looking down at him with that same worried frown.

“Did she now?” He tears his gaze away from her, eyeing the tray.

“You could have made yourself much sicker, you know. That was very reckless of you.” She lifts the cloche lid, and the room is filled with the fragrant smell of curry. “Scott said the storm was terrible.”

He isn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He lets out a halfhearted cough, and he nods. “Yeah. It sure was a nasty one.”

“I thought something warm might help,” she says, a little sheepishly. She dunks a wide, flat spoon into a bowl of rust-colored soup, teeming with rice noodles and bean sprouts and plump, succulent prawns. 

“What is it?” he asks, inhaling deeply. For someone as  _ horribly sick  _ as he’s been told he is, he’s starving.

“Laksa.” She squeezes a lime wedge over the top, before handing him the bowl. “My mother used to make it for me when I was sick. The spice will help clear you up.”

“Got it.” He twirls his spoon. “How much spice are we talking?”

“Enough,” she says, a little cryptically, and she smiles. 

It’s  _ that  _ smile. The one that’s tucked away safe in the corner of her mouth. Nothing but a curled lip, slight and sly. A secret.

He really ought to say something snappy back to her. Something  _ smooth,  _ to make her blush or giggle or swat at him. But he’s too busy looking at the secret smile. Too busy wondering how many other people have seen it. Too busy wondering if she’s got lipstick on, or if her lips just  _ look  _ like that, pink and soft and a little pearlescent. Too busy wondering-

“It works better if you eat it,” she says, looking pointedly at his hovering spoon. 

“Uh...yeah. Yes. Right.” He blinks, shaking his head, raising the soup to his lips. “Sorry. Just got a little-“

The end of his sentence is lost in a burning haze of chili flakes. 

He coughs, heavy and hard, wheezing at the sudden rush of heat. Tears sting at the corners of his eyes. He drops the spoon into the bowl with a clatter, and it sends soup splashing across the tray, staining the bedsheets. 

Tin-Tin purses her lips tight, looking at the splatter of soup on the bed. Even though his eyes are watering, he can tell she’s swallowing a laugh. 

“Good?” she asks lightly.

“It’s...definitely got spice in it.” He coughs again, rubbing the tears from one eye.

“I promise it’s good for you. Really.” She grins as she grabs a handful of napkins and leans across him, dabbing the soup off the linens. 

“I’ll take your word for it.” He takes a deep breath, feeling it burn across his tongue. 

He watches her quietly for a moment. There’s something at work behind her eyes, as she pats at the stain. Her brow furrows just a little. Her lips dip into a thoughtful frown.

She shifts a bit, turning to look at him, her arm still stretched across him. 

“I wanted to say thank you. For Eddie.” He might be imagining it, but he swears she leans down closer as she talks, dabbing at the stain. “I know it wasn’t easy for you.”

“I’m just glad we could help him. If they’re in trouble, it doesn’t matter whether it’s easy or not.” He holds very still, swallowing thickly as she reaches for another napkin. “So...I imagine he’ll be back around soon, right?”

She makes a little noise in the back of her throat, a kind of noncommittal  _ hmm _ . 

“He owes you one hell of a rain check,” Alan continues, not bothering to think the words over before he lets them tumble out. “Especially after you went through all that trouble with the dress…”

She stops to look at him then, and he feels color rising in his cheeks, a dull burn.

“I only mean...well, it’s not like I  _ noticed  _ the dress,” he stammers, holding her silent, inscrutable gaze. “Or, I did. But I only saw it for a minute. It was...I mean, it looked…”

She tilts her head a bit. A strand of dark hair falls across her cheek, and his fingers twitch as he imagines brushing it out of the way.

“It was a nice dress,” he finishes lamely. “That’s all.”

_ “That’s all.” _ She smiles, and she tosses a napkin onto the tray, but she doesn’t sit up. Instead, she leans over further, eyes still locked with his. “Alan Tracy...is that your idea of a compliment?” 

If it’s going to get her this close to him, it certainly is. It’s the greatest compliment he’ll ever give her. She’s only inches away. Her lips are slightly parted, and he can’t help but stare at her eyelashes, asking himself if they’ve always been so dark, and so long. They nearly brush her cheekbones when she blinks.

His mind’s racing a thousand miles per minute, tumbling in a wild torrent. He wonders what she tastes like. What she feels like. What would happen if he reached up and closed the last straggling inches between them, urging those impossibly-full lips open further, tongues touching, breath mingling. Wonders if he could make her forget Eddie Houseman completely, make her close her eyes and sigh into him and the man would evaporate like a shadow, like a ghost...

“Did you let him kiss you?” he whispers, almost subconsciously.

He hardly realizes he’s spoken out loud until she pulls back, her barely-parted lips tightening into a stern line.

“What?”

He swallows, tongue darting out to moisten his own bottom lip. That came out worse than he intended. Much, much worse, since he hadn’t  _ intended  _ to let it come out at all. 

“Did...I  _ let _ Eddie kiss me?” she asks, while he grasps for words. He can feel her retreating inch by agonizing inch, feel the moment unraveling like the frayed end of a loose thread.

_ Oh, hell.  _

He blinks, shaking his head fervently. “That isn’t-“

“Isn’t what you meant?” She narrows her eyes - warm hazel, surprisingly sharp, sparkling even in the low light - and sits up ramrod straight.

“It isn’t. I was just…”

“Just prying into things that  _ aren’t your business.”  _ She wads up another dripping napkin, tossing it down on the tray. “Maybe I  _ did  _ let him kiss me. Maybe  _ I  _ kissed  _ him.  _ What about that?”

“Tin-Tin…” The sentence trails off uselessly, falling flat and limp between them. He searches her face, struggling to read her. She seems...annoyed? Hurt? Disappointed?

Nothing he wants her to be. Not when she was leaning over him, just about to touch her mouth to his. 

She glowers at him as she gathers the tray. “He didn’t kiss me,” she mutters, her voice more than a little bitter. The cutlery rattles as she slams down the cloche lid. “I’m certain he was going to. But then I was stuck there in my  _ that’s all  _ dress, with everyone watching, while he flew off without a single word. If that makes you happy.”

“It doesn’t.” His voice is very low, the way it used to sound when Father scolded him for something. He might as well be a kid who got caught skipping class, the way he’s shrinking back against the pillows, digging and scrabbling for any excuse that would patch up the moment.

But the moment’s long gone. It rippled like quicksilver, shining briefly, slipping through his fingers before he could catch it.

Tin-Tin sighs heavily, shaking her head and standing from the edge of the bed. She sets the bowl of soup on the nightstand, none too gently. ”Eat that.  _ All  _ of it. And rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

She crosses the room, starting to pull the door closed behind her. She pauses for a moment, looking back over her shoulder.

“You’re lucky you’re sick,” she says, not bothering to hide the prickly edge in her voice. “I hope you know that.”

The door closes with a soft click, but the sound is as deafening as a gunshot in his empty room.

_ Lucky.  _ That’s him, alright. 

He flops back against the pillows, breath tight in his chest, and he stares at the ceiling.

* * *

Alan’s over his “nasty bug” just in time for satellite relief.

_ Miracle of miracles,  _ he thinks, as he makes his way to the lounge in the early evening. The others are milling around waiting for dinner. He settles onto the couch, watching them. He knows he’s pouting, sulking, not bothering to hide it for one moment as he watches  _ her,  _ and remembers the almost-kiss, playing each second of it over and over, again and again. 

She reminds him of a little bird, flitting between his brothers as she chirps a bright, cheery tune. When she smiles at something Scott said, it’s like a thousand-watt bulb shining all through the room. She’s dazzling. She’s made of crystal. She’s catching the fading sun and sending it scattering into a million vibrant colors. 

She makes his shirt collar feel too tight. 

He fidgets with it as Virgil sinks down beside him. His brother sighs, leaning back against the leather cushions. 

“So,” he says, in the way that only Virgil can say it. Two little letters that might as well weigh a hundred tons. 

_ So, Alan...spill your guts.  _

“Brilliant plan you all hashed out,” Alan says, grinding the words down to fine little points. He hopes they poke like needles. “Did me a whole world of good, being cooped up in my room like that.”

“Hey now.” Virgil raises his palms defensively. “I didn’t have a thing to do with that whole scheme. But it got her worried about you, didn’t it?”

“Oh, she was worried, sure. Before I went and opened my mouth. Then she got put-out enough to avoid me for two days.” 

“I  _ think  _ I remember telling you to act sympathetic,” Virgil says. “Sounds like that part didn’t quite stick, did it?”

Alan shakes his head. “I’m gonna be gone for a month, Virgil. A  _ month.  _ And that’s how I’m leaving it. She’ll be Mrs. Houseman by the time I get back.”

“You really think that?” 

He can feel Virgil’s eyes on him, and he knows his brother is peeling back the layers, seeing straight through every little twitch and tick. Alan sinks down deeper into the cushions, glaring into the middle distance. “Yes. Or...no. Hell, Virgil, I don’t know.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, screwing his eyes shut.  _ They’d almost kissed. She’d been right there, leaning over him, warm breath and full lips, closer than they’d ever been...right there...and he’d gone and choked... _

Virgil laughs. It’s a gentle sound, low beneath his breath. “She’s happy, Alan. One of the happiest people I’ve met in a while. She’s not trying to settle down anytime soon.”

That’s part of what gnaws at him. Virgil’s right - she won’t settle. She couldn’t. She’s too full of life, adventure, big bold feelings bursting at the seams. 

Maybe even too much for this little island in the middle of the wide-open sea. 

“You think she’ll still be here when I get back?” Alan asks, his voice barely a whisper. It’s a question with claws, and it digs in deep, stinging in a way he hasn’t felt before. In twenty years of life, Alan Tracy has never once stopped to wonder if he was  _ enough.  _

“I think you’re a fool, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Virgil gives him a friendly pat on the knee. “Come on. It’s your last proper meal for a while. Let’s eat while it’s hot.”

He only nods as Virgil stands and walks towards the dining room. Alan lingers a moment longer, eyes drifting back to Tin-Tin, following her every movement. 

Scott holds up his newspaper, showing her a headline. She touches his arm. She bends down, reading over his shoulder, her face close to his.

Alan’s gut twists with a strange feeling. Envy and anger and bitterness. Nasty things that stick in his skin like thorns. 

_ You’re not enough,  _ the feeling says. It has a voice like a snake, and great curved fangs that sink into his bones, puncturing through them, right down to the marrow.  _ You’ve never been enough. You’ll never be enough. Not even close. _

Because he’s just Alan Tracy. 

She looks up briefly and catches his gaze. Her eyes dart down, away from him. The edge of one tooth catches her lip, and she raises a hand to her hair, smoothing some invisible, unruly strand back into place. 

He’s just an absolute fool. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first jaunt through the Thunderbirds fandom. Since I'm still getting my bearings, this fic will stick pretty close to the path TOS canon sets for these two...but a little simple fluff (laced with insecurity and vulnerability and miscommunication and maybe some pining) never hurt anybody, right?


	2. can't let you slide through my hands

“I...uh...really can get that if you need me to, Tin-Tin.” 

She’s been fighting with the gear on Thunderbird 1’s thruster for far too long now. She’s being stubborn, and she knows it...but she needs one thing to go right today. Just one thing.

So she ignores Scott, gritting her teeth. She grips the wrench with two hands, pulling at it until her forearms burn.

She can feel him hovering behind her. He wants to say the right thing, do the right thing...his unease is palpable, rolling off him and washing over her like ocean waves. 

Normally, she appreciates how much he cares.

_ Normally,  _ she isn’t coming fresh off of being abandoned twice in a row. Eddie flying off to his construction site without a word, not even bothering to contact her after the rescue. Alan suddenly seeing the appeal in an extra ten hours of satellite duty...if it meant he didn’t have to see her before he left. 

So she’s not feeling particularly appreciative. Not today. And there’s something soothing about the ache in her shoulders, the beads of sweat on her forehead. She can channel all her frustration into poor Thunderbird 1 - at least for a while. 

“How about you take a breather?” Scott tries again. He speaks slowly, very tentatively, like he’s trying to find the right wires to clip on a ticking bomb. “This isn’t gonna go anywhere anytime soon. The readings from the calibrator are probably ready, if you want to swing by the lab...”

“I can manage,” she grumbles, pulling at the wrench again. “Why don’t you just...go on and check them...and leave me here...without saying goodbye...like... _ everyone...else!” _

She gives the wrench one final, desperate tug, letting out a growl of frustration she didn’t know she was capable of. She slumps against the engine, breathing heavily. 

Her hand stings. She looks down at it and sees a fresh cut blossoming across her palm. 

Scott frowns, and opens his mouth...before wisely closing it again. He turns away, rummaging through the first aid cabinet. “Is it deep?” he asks.

“Just a scratch.” She curls her fingers and uncurls them again, sighing as a few drops of blood break the surface of her skin. 

She doesn’t consider herself a sloppy person. But this morning alone, she’s managed to spill three cups of coffee, and shatter a dropper full of sulfuric acid...and now all but rip her arms off trying to loosen a bolt that won’t budge. 

“Let me see it.” He gestures for her hand, and she holds it out, letting him examine the cut. He frowns, tearing the seal on a sterilizing swab. She winces as he wipes it over her palm.

“So...Eddie.” He doesn’t look up as he talks, instead focusing on sanitizing the cut, reaching for a roll of gauze. “You two were pretty close, yeah?” 

She just nods. 

She remembers freshman year, locking eyes with him across the library. She’d been chewing on the lid of her pen, pouring over notes from the day’s organic chemistry lecture when she saw him - a dashing engineering student with a disarming smile. 

She’d been more than a little naive, on her own for the first time. And Eddie...he’d been  _ fun.  _ Reckless and wild and more self-assured than anyone she’d met before. He’d been the one to light the little spark of rebellion that had hidden deep inside her for years, coaxing it from a smoldering ember to a blistering flame. 

Midnight drives through the empty desert, shouting frustrations at the stars before finals. Pressing her against the alley wall of a bar, kissing her while she tasted whiskey on his tongue and her head spun. Taking her to the shore, to the high, rocky cliffs, coaxing her to jump into inky black waters below -  _ you’ll be fine, I’m right here, I’ve got you.  _ Everything he did had left her breathless, dizzy, feeling like she was standing on the lip of a great abyss, peering over the edge as wind rushed up around her, stinging her cheeks, tangling her hair. 

It shouldn’t have shocked her to watch him disappear into the night sky. It shouldn’t have hurt. He was never  _ meant  _ to stay. 

But even now, with him long gone, it feels like ripping a blade out from beneath her skin. A serrated one, with long, curved teeth that snag against every vein. 

And with Alan...she can’t help but think that she’s shoved another knife deep between her ribs. 

“You know...Alan was worried about you, during that operation. He wasn’t a fan of the guy jetting off like that,” Scott says, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Here, hold this tight.”

“Well. He’s got a funny way of showing it.” She can’t keep the bite out of her words. She holds the gauze in place as Scott wraps it around her palm, cutting it loose from the roll. 

She feels like a child, like she’s all worked up over nothing, about to throw a tantrum because she can't eat dessert until she finished her vegetables.  _ They aren’t together.  _ She tells herself that again and again and again, until the words lose their shape.  _ They aren’t together. He can leave when he wants. He can leave without saying a single word. He can stay gone forever. They aren’t together, he doesn’t owe her anything, she doesn’t matter, none of this matters… _

It’s embarrassing, standing her in the hangar with her hand bloody, with the boy who feels like the older brother she never had bandaging it up, while she fights against prickling tears that haven’t earned their place.

She blinks quickly, hoping Scott doesn’t notice. 

It’s a bit like hoping the sun doesn’t rise. 

“Alan’s a good kid. He just...he doesn’t know how to hold himself in.” She watches as Scott’s brow furrows thoughtfully. As young as he is, he’s already got worry lines creeping along his forehead. “When he cares about someone, it’s gonna come bursting out in all sorts of ways. A couple of them might even make sense sometimes.”

She lets out a sharp laugh - bitter, incredulous, an edge of pain to it that makes her feel so utterly  _ humiliated _ . “I’ll admit, leaving the planet is quite a bit more dramatic than what Eddie pulled.”

“He’ll apologize.” Scott nods to himself. “Call him. Check in. It’ll be the first thing he says, I bet you.”

Before she can respond, Scott pats her hand, and she flexes it against the bandages. The sting has started to ease. “There you go. Shouldn’t be fatal.”

She smiles. She thanks him. She turns her attention back to Thunderbird 1, looming above them, silver hull glinting beneath the bright hangar lights. They work silently, while her thoughts buzz around her like a cloud of itchy, relentless gnats.

Scott’s probably right. 

Scott’s  _ always  _ right. 

But when she thinks of making that call, her chest clenches, breath caught by something icy and sharp. She’s not sure she can choke down her pride enough to go chasing Alan Tracy into space. 

Not when she wasn’t worth saying goodbye to.

* * *

She can’t make a cup of teh tarik like her father. 

She just doesn’t have his patience. She’s watched him do it a thousand times - slowly, steadily pulling the tea, pouring it from cup to cup, never once spilling a drop. And then there’s the almost-magical touch to his methods...he always seems to know when she needs it a little sweeter than usual. When she needs to vent her frustrations while he silently works, or when she needs a bit of advice to accompany the inviting mug, brimming with rich, velvety foam. 

The cup she’s holding now - lukewarm and barely frothy - just isn’t cutting it. 

Or maybe it’s the dark, silent kitchen that makes the difference. In the earliest blackness of the morning, the villa is perfectly still, the main floor empty save for shadows. For hours, she’d lain in the dark, staring at the ceiling, watching those shadows slant across her room. When the clock on the nightstand finally read 4:08 AM, she’d given up, tossing off the covers and wandering downstairs. 

Now she sits alone. She taps her finger against the mug. She frowns down at the contents, and takes a tiny sip.

She fiddles with the used tissue in her left hand, crumpling it up, smoothing it out, balling it up again. She’d told herself she wasn’t going to cry. She’d fought against it all day long, choked it down until her throat ached and her chest burned. But under the cover of lonely darkness, the frustration had finally won. 

No matter how she tries, she can’t stop thinking about Alan. Can’t stop thinking about how  _ close  _ they were, when she sat in his bedroom, leaning over him, feeling the whisper of his breath against her lips.

Can’t stop thinking about how wrong it all went.

She’s used to the pouting, and to giving him the silent treatment now and again, when he lets something a little too petulant slip out. She’ll just roll her eyes, taking a quick snipe at that constantly simmering jealousy so close to his surface. 

She’s not used to the  _ leaving, _ so cold and abrupt. But perhaps...if she can upset someone enough to drive him some thirty-thousand odd kilometers into the atmosphere...she ought to  _ get  _ used to it.

She sighs, staring down at the table. Maybe Scott’s right. She could call. It would bring a little bit of closure, if nothing else...because unlike Eddie Houseman, Alan Tracy can’t stay gone forever, fading into a distant memory. They’ll have to keep working together. So the sooner she sorts out the prickling, nagging confusion she feels when she thinks of him, the better...like ripping off a bandaid...

There’s a rustle from the doorway, and she jumps, splashing sticky condensed milk across the table. 

“Whoops.” John’s voice is very low as he steps into the kitchen. He offers her a smile, soft and apologetic. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She shakes her head, quickly dabbing at her eyes, hoping she doesn’t look too out of sorts. “You’re fine! I just didn’t expect anyone else would be awake.”

“Yeah. Sleep schedule’s off. It always takes a couple of days to adjust to things back down here.” He slides into the chair across from her, arching one thin, pale eyebrow. “What’s your excuse?”

She sighs. She gestures to the tea, to the discarded tissues on the table beside her. “It’s a...rough night.”

“I can see that.” She hasn’t seen John in a month, and she’s forgotten what a strange way he has of looking at people - sharp, piercing eyes that seem to bore through someone, reaching deep down towards their core...but still gentle, somehow. Inquisitive, but sincere. 

“Alan told me a little about what happened,” he says, almost sheepishly. 

She feels another surge of tears. She blinks them back. “Does  _ everyone  _ know?”

“Well…” he looks away, leaving the sentence hanging.

She takes that as a  _ yes.  _ And she feels a little part of herself wishing that the floor would open up, and the earth would swallow her whole. 

“I...don’t suppose Brains knows,” he finally offers. 

He’s trying. She lets out a sad, humorless laugh, shaking her head. “I almost burned a hole through the laboratory counter today. Brains knows enough.” 

“Are you real put out with Alan?” John tilts his head to the side, watching her curiously. She knows he shares a strange bond with Alan - two brothers who may as well be polar opposites, working in tandem to keep their satellite turning. She’s heard plenty of their bickering over the intercom when they’ve been up there together. 

Or she’s heard  _ Alan  _ bickering. John, always even-keeled, tends to keep his commentary to himself. 

“I don’t know.” She runs her finger along the rim of the mug, wiping away some of the tea that drips over the edge. “I just...don’t know what to do with any of it. As soon as I think I understand him, it all changes. He’s happy, then he’s mad, then he’s hurt…” 

_ Then he’s gone, _ she finishes silently. 

John gives her a little nod of acknowledgment. His gaze is deep, thoughtful. 

“You know about strong force?” he asks, after a long moment. 

She presses down a sigh. She tries to think of a polite way to tell John that this  _ isn’t  _ the ideal time for a physics refresher. 

Not that it would stop him. He clears his throat. 

“Imagine everything disappeared...buildings, trees, planets, people…all of it, just gone in an instant. Vanished straight into thin air.”

She nods, fighting the urge to lay her head on the table. Or to curl up beneath the table, maybe, and stay there for the next four weeks.

“And you,” he goes on. “You disappear. So does Alan. But there’s some small part - subatomic - left behind from both of you.”

As he speaks, he looks down at the table, studying the wood grains. He traces his finger along one serpentine line. “Quarks, maybe. The only two traces of matter left in the entire universe. Far apart. Lonely.”

She watches him draw idle loops on the tabletop.  _ Strings,  _ she thinks, and can’t help but smile a little. Even here, in the dark, empty kitchen, where he’s just seen her sniffling like a little girl, his mind is twisting through theories she hasn’t thought of since her first undergraduate seminars.

“There’d be nothing but space all around you, right? Black. Cold. Lifeless. But...those quarks, yours and his...they’d be pulled together. Pulled across an immeasurable distance, maybe, if there’s nothing else vibrating. Nothing to lock you in, except the smallest parts of each other.”

His words are slow and measured. The patterns he draws are tighter, more deliberate. His eyes look like he’s a thousand miles away.

“But then, the closer those quarks get...the weaker the pull.” His hand slows, his fingertip moving in a strange, infinite spiral. “They’ve found that orbit they were searching for. No need to reach out any further.”

He looks up at her, his brow furrowing like he’s just solved an equation that’s plagued him for months. “So you just dance around one another.” 

They’re both silent for a long moment. 

“I...don’t know if that’s romantic or tragic,” she says at last, glancing down. His hands are still now. 

“Both. Or neither. It’s only the inescapable current of the universe.” His lips quirk into a hint of a smile. 

“Right. Only that.” She tosses the crumpled tissue into the wastebasket beside the table. “Your approach is...very different from Scott’s. I’ll say that much.”

“No surprise there.” He stands, stretching, and makes his way to the refrigerator. “Scott isn’t the type to sit back and let quantum mechanics figure it all out for him.” 

He pulls out a container of indiscernible leftovers. He pops open the lid, sniffing the contents and frowning. “But then I don’t suppose you are, either.”

“I’d hope not.” She sighs, resting her elbows on the table, hands beneath her chin. “How did Alan look when you left?”

“About like you do right now.” He glances over his shoulder, hand hovering inside the refrigerator. “Just less mascara running.”

_ “John!”  _ She rubs furiously beneath her eyes, her fingertips coming away black. 

He lets out a laugh - something she doesn’t hear often from him. She purses her lips into a tight line, looking back down at the cup of tea, now cold, the foam all but disappeared. 

“Did he say anything about leaving so suddenly?” she asks. 

She’s not sure what she wants to hear as the answer. 

He shakes his head. He pulls out a half-eaten pecan pie Grandma Tracy made, peeling back the foil. He turns and opens a drawer, digging around for a fork. “All I can say is Thunderbird 5 has a way of clearing your head. Nothing but you, and the stars, and a thousand little voices. If you’ve got something you want to think about, that’s the place to do it.”

He slides into the chair again. He spears a toasted pecan, crusted in caramelized sugar, before he tilts the pie pan towards her. “Do you want any?”

She shakes her head. 

“Good.” He pops the pecan into his mouth. “I don’t want to be rude. But I was hoping you’d say no.”

She watches as John eats, silencing all talk of quarks and stars and the intricate fabric of the universe. 

She can’t help but wonder how Alan would feel about his brother’s speech. Two objects locked in a strange, serpentine orbit, never quite willing to touch. Content to hover at each other’s edges. 

She can imagine his exasperated sigh. His snappish response. His insistence that he’s  _ so much more  _ than whatever that metaphor makes him out to be. 

He’d tell John they’re people - not particles.

In spite of herself, she feels a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

* * *

Mr. Tracy wakes up at 5:30 AM every morning. 

She glances at the clock on the wall. It gives her just under an hour.

She’s spent far too long sitting at his desk, staring at the intercom, trying to work up the courage to make the call. The red light blinks at a steady pace, taunting her. She watches it until she sees spots. 

It all feels so silly. Absolutely childish. She doesn’t even know what she would say.  _ I’m sorry  _ or  _ I miss you  _ or  _ I hope you stay up there until you sort this all out, because I’m tired of this game… _

She drums her fingers against the desk blotter. The call would show up in the communications record, of course. It would be unauthorized. Unnecessary. Compromising the frequency. But she can’t remember the last time those records were audited. And if  _ she’s  _ the one doing the auditing...there’s no reason she can’t bump the monthly communications check by a few days...

She traces the edge of the call button. She looks at the clock again. 

Forty-five minutes. 

Anything she needs to say to Alan Tracy can’t possibly be said in forty-five minutes. Forty-five  _ days, _ maybe. 

She lets out a defeated sigh, pushing away from the desk. She flips the intercom closed. She makes sure the chair is turned exactly as Mr. Tracy had left it. She fixes the stack of papers she’d bumped with her elbow. She turns back towards the kitchen, her sights set on a cup of strong, bitter coffee...and then she’ll dig into her work, and lick her wounds, and four weeks will have passed before she knows it...

And with an exasperated, frantic noise, nearly like a snarl, she’s back behind the desk, practically throwing herself on top of the intercom, flicking the switch to open the frequency.  It happens almost subconsciously, something deep inside her grabbing the reins, steering her through the motions to make the call. All feeling, no thought. 

Somewhere miles and miles above her, the alert’s beeping in Thunderbird 5. Alan's probably stumbling out of his cot, or pushing away from another console, or throwing down a mess of wires and metal he’d been soldering away at.

Maybe it’s a mistake. But one of them has to send their subatomic matter crashing together. 

It might as well be her. 


	3. things are different today

The first time Tin-Tin calls, he feels worry as thick and as black as oil drip down his throat and pool in his stomach.

He’d trudged over to the comm, half-awake, flipping the channel open as enthusiastically as he could manage. And when it was her face on the monitor, he’d blinked a few times, making sure he was actually seeing things right. 

But it’s her...and it shouldn’t be her...and it’s making his brain turn a mile a minute. 

_ She wouldn’t call unless nobody else could call. She wouldn’t call unless something was deeply, devastatingly wrong. She wouldn’t call unless- _

“Can you talk for a minute?” she asks, her voice a low whisper. 

_ Unless she wanted to talk.  _

He nods. He tries - without much success - not to think about the other night. The way she seemed to snap shut the second he mentioned Eddie Houseman.  But it’s all he’s  _ been  _ thinking about. Even John had mentioned that he seemed grumpier than usual. And Alan had snapped at him. Then apologized. Then snapped again. 

He feels like it's got him all twisted inside out. He’s never been any good at this...at talking, at listening, at patching things up and smoothing them over. 

And he proves it again, putting on a brilliant display as he tries to fumble through a conversation over the comms.

“Are you-“

“I hope everything-“

They trip over one another. They pause. 

“I just wanted to-“

“I was thinking-“

They both stop again. She looks away. He rubs his temple. 

“Sorry-“

“Go ahead-“

She laughs a little. Even over the monitor, with the earth’s atmosphere sprawling wide and intangible between them, the sound makes him feel dizzy. The tension uncoils ever so slightly. 

“You first,” he says. He sits down in the chair, fighting the urge to lean forward towards the monitor.

She’s silent for a moment. She lowers her eyes. “I wanted to go ahead and call since I didn’t get to say goodbye. Since you just...left.”

He frowns at the way she lingers on the last word.  He’d _left_ so she wouldn’t have to see him. He’d left because she was upset. Because he was embarrassed. Because he’d made a mess out of everything. She’d been hurt, angry, and the thought of sucking it all up and saying a friendly goodbye made him want to hurl himself into the welcoming vacuum of space as quick as humanly possible. 

He’d figured it was best for both of them if he just...disappeared for a while. 

He opens his mouth, ready to say as much, but she shakes her head.

“You don’t need to say anything,” she says. He hears the  _ click click click  _ of a pen in her hand as she toys with it. “I understand.”

He shakes his head. “I only left because-” 

_ “Really.”  _ She gives him a sad little smile. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just…” 

She frowns, trailing off. Her eyes flicker away again. 

“Let’s just go ahead and run communication diagnostics,” she says, a little too no-nonsense. “Since we’re both up.” 

“Yeah.” He says. “Sure.” 

_ I’m sorry,  _ he thinks, staring at the monitor, hoping it somehow comes seeping out of his pores...because he clearly can’t get it past his mouth. 

He can get everything  _ else  _ past his mouth. Easy and efficient, no effort at all. 

But not that. 

Not when it matters. 

Not when there’s a shadow shaped like Eddie Houseman hovering over them, just outside the corner of his vision, and no matter what he does, he can’t seem to shake it off. 

She’s quick to run down the steps of the check-up, carefully dodging anything that might ring the others. He listens and nods and walks through the instructions, all muscle memory at this point. 

It’s completely unnecessary. He knows it. She knows it. But it’s nice to just  _ talk.  _ To pretend they never came that close to kissing. Everything back at square one. 

She’s just her. He’s just him.

They’re just what they’ve always been. 

She calls him again the next week. And the week after that. Always very late at night, always talking in a hushed whisper with the lights off. She takes a few notes about something-or-other - supplies, system diagnostics. They talk about recent operation reports. They talk about how bored they both are - how he barely knows what to do to kill the time, and how John isn’t exactly an excellent tennis partner. 

“Oh, he’s coordinated enough, don’t get me wrong.” She shakes her head. “He just  _ thinks  _ so much. He wanted to go over a missed shot almost a dozen times the other afternoon.”

The fourth time she calls him, when they're finally back to being loose and easy and nearly normal, she tells him it’s his turn to come up with the excuse. She spins in his father’s chair, shooting down idea after idea as he brainstorms.

“You could just say you wanted to talk to me,” he offers.

She looks up, away, pursing her lips thoughtfully. After a moment, she shakes her head. “No one would ever believe that.”

“Cute.” He leans back in his own chair, feet up on the console. He reaches towards the little dish of sunflower seeds beside him, tossing one up into the air, angling it towards his mouth. It bounces off his cheek. 

“I’ll say we were worried you might have rats,” she mutters. “How many of those is John going to have to clean up when he gets there?”

He looks down at the floor. He shrugs, popping another seed into his mouth and cracking it between his molars. “A few.”

He looks back at her, readying his next quip, and he’s hit with that feeling again - the one where a single glimpse of her knocks the air out of him. Something about the  glow of the monitor illuminating her face, making shadows rest in the soft contours of her cheekbones, has him scrambling for what he's supposed to say next. 

He misses seeing her. In front of him. In person.

He misses knowing he can reach out and touch her...even if he hasn’t managed to do it yet.

“Well then.” She looks up at the clock, letting out a sigh that he hopes is a little disappointed. “It’s almost morning. I suppose you’d best get back to business, Thunderbird 5.” 

He shakes himself out of his stupor. “And I suppose you’d best get out from behind that desk before you’re fired.” 

She wrinkles her nose. “Do you think he’d really fire me?” 

Alan waves his hand dismissively. “No. He’d just say you were  _ highly irresponsible.  _ Something about being disappointed by your...unprofessional conduct, probably.” 

“I could just tell him it was your fault,” she offers. “He’d believe me.”

“With my sterling record?” He arches his eyebrow. “No, ma’am. He’d never buy that.”

She smiles. Just as brilliant and dazzling as it is when he's standing in front of her. 

It makes his chest ache. 

“Well. Goodnight, Thunderbird-” 

“Wait.” 

She stops, clearly leaning forward, arm outstretched towards the switch. 

_ I’m sorry,  _ he thinks again, for what has to be the thousandth time that month, as he stares at her, as his pulse pounds a little too quickly. The words feel like splinters on his tongue.  _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m- _

“I...hope you have a good day,” he says, quickly, lamely. 

She smiles. 

She nods. 

He watches until the screen goes black. 

_ One more week.  _ He lets out a heavy breath, pushing away from the console.  _ Just one more. And then he can set things right.  _

* * *

She’s twelve years old when Alan Tracy pushes her into a duck pond. 

It’s late summer. The air is hot and heavy, thick enough to chew, and the hum of cicadas is almost deafening. The pond isn’t far from their house, and after a downpour late last night, Gordon had set up an impromptu tadpole-hunting expedition. 

So she goes with him, Alan tagging along. She’s used to John being there too, but he’s staying behind now, suddenly too grown-up for these kinds of adventures. She’s never noticed the line in the sand before - one clearly separating the  _ adults  _ from the  _ children.  _ But when it’s just the three of them wandering beneath the heavy August sun, she feels it like a punch to the stomach. 

She doesn’t like it. 

She doesn't like it one bit. 

“I bet John’s got a girlfriend,” she says, not bothering to hide the resentment in her voice. It’s the ultimate betrayal, to leave their little group for an outsider. 

Gordon doesn’t answer as he creeps along the edges of the pond, squinting down at the shallow water. She waits for him, walking back and forth across a fallen log like a tightrope, arms held out wide. “That’s what it is,” she says, nodding to herself. “That’s why he doesn’t do anything fun anymore.” 

“You don’t think he’d tell us?” Gordon asks. He pushes away a rock, frowning when his search proves fruitless. 

She shakes her head. “He never tells anybody anything.” She reaches the end of the log and does a less-than-graceful turn, stumbling as she tries to catch her balance. 

“You’re gonna fall,” Alan mutters, already bored, picking moss off the bark. “And dad’s gonna yell.” 

“No, I’m not.” She straightens her shoulders, planting her gaze on a tree in the distance as she walks out over the water again. 

“John probably told Virg.” Gordon moves to another promising puddle, squatting down. “He tells Virg everything.”

She doesn’t answer as she makes a daring hop over a gnarled branch. Maybe he told Virgil, but trying to get anything out of Virgil is like trying to pry open a rusted-shut door. If he’s told  _ Scott,  _ on the other hand...she can find a way to work with that...

“Do you ever think about kissing?” Gordon asks suddenly. He says it like he’s very far away, his gaze seemingly lost in the depths of the puddle. 

Her eyes go wide, and she almost trips. He looks up, shaking his head quickly, his face etched into a vision of horror as he realizes what he’s said. “Not me! Just...whoever. Someone else. Anybody else. Definitely not me.”

She can almost feel a mutual shudder of revulsion pass through them at the thought.

_ “No,”  _ she says, very adamantly. “And I’m not going to.”

And it’s mostly true. 

It’s more  _ true  _ than  _ not true,  _ anyway.

Probably.

“Nobody is gonna kiss either of you,” Alan pipes up. 

She pulls a face, turning to tell him they weren’t  _ talking to him,  _ but Gordon beats her to it.  He rolls his eyes, rising from beside the puddle. “What do you know about kissing?”

“I know a lot about kissing,” Alan mutters back, looking away from Gordon. 

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I  _ do.” _

“You’ve never even come close to kissing a girl.”

Alan balks then, scrambling for a comeback.  Tin-Tin bites her lip, smiling, seizing the moment. 

“You’ve kissed Grandma Tracy a lot,” she offers - very unhelpfully, and when she’s positioned just within arm’s length of him. 

She barely realizes he’s shoved her off the log until she tumbles into the water. She lets out a yelp, flailing up to the surface, spluttering. She hears Gordon yelling, and rubs the water from her eyes just in time to see Alan hastily retreating. 

Gordon’s already waist-deep in the water, wading out towards her. She spits out the taste of pond scum on her tongue. She grabs a clump of wet, muddy weeds, and glaring daggers, she flings them towards Alan as hard as she can. They land just short of their target. 

She hopes, with all the desperateness of a preteen girl, that Grandma Tracy is the only person who kisses him for the rest of his life. 

* * *

She’s twenty years old when Alan Tracy drives her to a diner just down the road from the hospital. 

She’s already spent seven hours in the waiting room. She’d tried sitting still in one of the hard, angular chairs with a cracked leather cushion. She’d tried pacing the length of the hall like a caged animal, listening to the television drone on and on in the background, endless loops of news she didn’t care about.  She did anything she could to avoid clawing her skin off while they waited to hear when -  _ if -  _ Gordon would wake up. 

“He’d be mad if he knew you weren’t drinking that,” Alan says, nodding towards the milkshake she ordered. It’s lumpy, melting, but she sighs, grabbing a fry from the basket between them. She dunks it into the shake, listlessly stirring it around. 

She barely has an appetite. She just sinks deeper into the booth, staring straight ahead.

They don’t talk much. Nobody has talked much today, aside from whispered questions and worried speculation. There’s a stifling kind of fog hanging over them all. It feels like someone’s holding a damp rag over her nose and mouth, pressing it down until she couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. 

She’d gotten the call from Scott. He’d been the first to fly in, stationed nearby at Edwards. He’d been the one to call them each, one after the other, telling the same horrible story again and again. 

A story that doesn’t have any kind of ending yet. No answers. No  _ he’s fine, he’ll pull through, it’s not looking good, he’s not going to make it  _ \- just nothing. Just unfathomable, dizzying mountains made of  _ nothing  _ everywhere she looks. 

It’s been grating at her all day long, rubbing her skin raw. And when Virgil had quietly suggested she sit back down, try to get some rest...she’d snapped. 

Poor Virgil had flinched in a way she’d never seen before. 

That’s when Alan had stood up, saying he was going on a drive. Inviting her along, with a tone that made it clear it wasn’t exactly up for negotiation. 

She watches a drop of melted chocolate drip over the rim of the glass, running down one of the rivulets. 

“How does everybody else do it?” she asks, staring at the growing puddle of milkshake on the formica tabletop. “Keep it together like that?”

“No idea.” He looks out the window, at the dark, quiet parking lot.  She follows his gaze. The streetlights are on, casting a dull yellow glow over the pavement. They're the only two here. It’s a sleepy little town just outside Marineville - they’d transferred Gordon off-base almost immediately, expecting long surgeries and a much longer recovery.

Assuming they made it to the  _ recovery  _ part at all.

She doesn’t have all the details. She isn’t sure she wants them.  _ Failed hydrofoils. Four hundred knots. _ It’s enough to paint a picture she knows she doesn’t want to look at.

“This is miserable,” she whispers. She drags her palm across her cheek, hastily rubbing away a tear before he can see it. “I feel like I’m going to explode.”

“Then explode,” Alan says, his voice low. He’s turned back towards her, and looks like he’s studying her very closely beneath the glaring fluorescent lights. “You think he’d be holding it together if you were unconscious in there?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” She tips her head back against the booth, blinking away more tears as they gather _.  _ “But everyone else-“

“Forget them.” He reaches out very suddenly, almost lurching forward, but stops just as quickly, pressing his palms flat against the table. He stares down at them. “You aren’t...you’re…”

He looks frustrated. His brows draw into a firm scowl as he searches for words. 

“You’re different,” he finally says. “From all of them.”

She tilts her head a little. She’s seen him do a lot of things, but never settle into a tone like this. He talks very slowly, every word measured - something she wouldn’t have imagined he could do before today. “Gordon doesn’t need you to do what everyone else is doing. He just...needs you to be there.  _ You.” _

The last word sounds odd. It’s like he’s said it for the very first time. Like he isn’t used to what it means. 

Something in his gaze makes her look away. She worries her bottom lip. She picks at a tear in the cushion beneath her. 

“You know,” she says, after the silence has gotten a little too heavy, a little too strange. “That almost sounded mature.”

He leans back in his seat, vinyl squeaking. He flashes a familiar grin. “Didn’t it? I kind of impressed myself with that one.” 

Before she can answer, he snatches the last good fry out of the basket, leaving behind crumbs. 

* * *

She’s twenty-two years old when she’s standing on the balcony for the first time, looking out over the ocean. It’s dark, and it's late, and all she wants to do is curl up in bed and sleep off a trip that was far too long and eventful...but there’s something hypnotizing about this new place, calm and wild all at once. The crash of waves against the rocks. The hum of colorful bugs in the trees, rising and falling and rising again. It’s like a soft, strange lullaby, and she can’t tear herself away from it just yet.

She doesn’t remember much about her old home - her home before the Tracy family - but when she closes her eyes, the feeling that tugs at her is something like this. Warm and easy and quiet, sharp salt lacing the air. 

“Hey, you.” The voice behind her abruptly ends the  _ quiet  _ part of things. She smiles without turning.

Alan walks up and leans against the railing next to her, hands folded together. Snippets of conversation drift through the open door of the lounge, tangled in the soothing notes of Virgil’s piano. 

She’s missed it. 

She’s missed every bit of it. 

“You holding up alright?” Alan asks. 

She nods. “Now that I’m here, sure. But I don’t think I’ll get on another plane for...a while.”

“Well, at least you made it in one piece.  _ And  _ you got your first official ride in a bird.” He looks at her, grinning. “What’d you think?”

She purses her lips, searching for an answer. She looks down at her hands, resting on the railing. After the unexpected setbacks with Fireflash, she’d made the trip home with Virgil. It was her first introduction to one of the Thunderbirds she’d be helping maintain.

Virgil had talked about every inch of the system for hours.

“Is it always that...slow?” she finally asks, very carefully.

Alan lets out a sound like a sneeze - a laugh he tries to throttle, but it bursts out in a sharp bark. He turns back towards the lounge. “Oh, hang on. I’ve gotta tell Virg you said that.”

Her eyes widen. She pushes off of the railing. “Don’t you  _ dare.” _

“Just wait until you see his face-“

_ “Alan!”  _ She swats at his shoulder, narrowing her eyes into a withering glare. “I swear, if you say a single word to him…”

_ “I’m  _ not the one who said anything about speed. That’s all you.” But he leans back, elbows against the railing, a broad smile on his face. 

_ It’s a nice smile, _ she thinks - and she frowns just as quickly, wondering where that came from. 

“You’re a horrible person,” she mutters, wrapping her arms around her waist, leaning back next to him. “I hope you know that.”

He lets out a low chuckle, and she can’t help but cast a sidelong glance at him. It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since she’s seen him. They’ve all been busy - practically scattered across the world, no time for even a quick holiday gathering. But it’s so much easier than she expected, slipping back into place like this. Almost like she was never gone. 

She watches him in the gathering dark. She can’t remember exactly when they grew up...when he stopped being the kid brother, the scrawny teenager trapped in the middle of an unending growth spurt. When everything about him seemed to get a little more defined - eyes sharper, jaw firmer, shoulders broader. 

When he started wearing sports jackets. With the sleeves rolled up. While he leaned casually against balconies. 

She stares at his forearm for a few seconds longer than she ever imagined she would. 

She bites the inside of her cheek.

“So...I heard all about your thesis,” she says, stretching for something to help push away any errant thoughts of arms or smiles. “Your little  _ incident. _ Seventy-five thousand dollars worth of property damage…”

His face falls into a heavy, familiar scowl. Much easier to handle. “No. No way. Don’t you start on that.”

“It’s impressive.” She bumps her shoulder against his, jostling him. “Just think about it. Seventy-five  _ thousand-“ _

“Eighty.” His voice is very flat.

“Excuse me.” She clears her throat lightly. “Eighty thousand dollars.”

_ “And…”  _ he turns towards her quickly, scowl deepening. “It was a group effort. That’s the part everyone keeps leaving out.”

“Hmm.” She squints ahead into the warm lights of the lounge, trying very desperately to keep a straight face. “What’s today?”

She can feel his glare prickling against her skin like a frosty wind. “Why?”

“I want to write it down. The day Alan Tracy didn’t take full credit for something.” 

He lets out a deep, vexed sigh. “So glad dad hired you,” he mutters, craning his neck back to look up at the sky. The corner of his mouth twists into a reluctant smile.  _ “So  _ glad.”

She nods. “I know you are.” 

Virgil’s music floats around them like mist after a light rain. She hears Gordon laughing. She watches Scott shake his head at whatever was said, quietly fixing himself another drink. 

The two of them are very still for a moment. She follows his gaze upwards, tracing it to the high bright moon that hangs like a mirror between the clouds. 

“It’s good that you’re here,” Alan says after a while. “It feels right.”

She smiles up at the stars. 

_ It does,  _ she thinks. She tightens her arms around her waist.

* * *

He gets back to the island late in the afternoon without much fanfare. Half of them don’t even notice he’s there yet - Tin-Tin included. For a while, he leans against the kitchen doorway, watching her.

When she’s alone with her father, she speaks in Malay, voice swinging from a brisk staccato to a lilting, almost musical flow. He’s always liked listening to it. Even when he was younger, he would hover in the hallway outside, imagining what she might be saying.

It had bothered him when he was a teenager. When he was just beginning to notice her - how she walked and moved and talked and listened, how everything she did made rooms sparkle. It had him all knotted up, knowing there was a secret part of her he couldn’t understand. 

Maybe it still does, a little. 

She says something and sighs, looking down at her flour-covered apron. She dusts her hands off. She turns to face the door, stopping short when she sees Alan. 

He can hear the little gasp of air as she starts to say something. She frowns, looking back at her father.  Kyrano only smiles, touching her shoulder as he disappears into the pantry.

She glances away from Alan, up at the clock on the wall. “I didn’t realize it was this late,” she says. “I’d have come out to say hello if I knew you were back.”

"I'll let it slide once." He takes a few steps into the kitchen, stopping short of her. 

Neither of them seems to know what to do with themselves. She looks down, away, anywhere but him.  He shifts in place. 

There’s a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach as he looks at her - her dark hair swept back into a haphazard bun, a smudge of flour on her cheek.  It’s only been a month. Four weeks. But every time he gets back, seeing her again makes his mouth go dry and his palms sweat. 

“How was...space?” she asks, eyes flickering up to meet his. 

He shrugs. “Not too exciting. It was strange, though...I kept getting interrupted by these calls-”

“Stop it.” She narrows her eyes into a fierce little glare. “You would have been bored if I hadn’t called so much.”

“Probably,” he says.

He wonders if he ought to say more. To tell her that her calls were the only thing keeping him sane. That he was counting the agonizing seconds between them. That every time someone else buzzed through, he felt like he’d had a bucket of ice water dumped down the back of his shirt. That he was doing everything he could to catch a single glimpse of her on the monitor during the day. That he was straining to hear every word she said when the channel was live during briefings. That one day, she was sitting beside his father, and wearing a deep green top, and it made her eyes look like emeralds, and she was biting her lip as she took notes, and Scott had to call his name three times before he snapped out of it…

Instead, he looks at the trays behind her. Little cakes in several different colors, all stamped with elaborate patterns. 

And he asks “what are you making?” 

And he tries to look very interested in them. 

“Angku kuih...in theory.” She frowns at the mess on the counter. She points at them, one by one. “Sweet potato...red bean...taro…”

_ He should have kissed her.  _ He hasn’t stopped thinking about it all month. He thinks about it now, as he watches her talk. Two steps and he’d be close enough to touch her. Her upper lip’s a perfect Cupid’s bow and he wants to trace it with his thumb. Wants to push her back against the counter and cover her mouth with his. No talking this time. No mistakes. Nothing to regret.

He takes a step forward. 

He reaches out...then rakes his hand through his hair.

She doesn’t notice.

“Hopefully these turn out,” she’s saying, hands on her hips. 

He frowns, half-listening. “Seems like a lot of trouble for a Wednesday.”

She’s quiet for a long time, checking over each of the plates. She looks disappointed, like they aren’t quite living up to her standards. 

“They’re supposed to be good luck,” she finally says. “For...days that matter.” Her voice dips so low, it’s nearly a whisper. 

“What matters about today?” He furrows his brow. It’s not anyone’s birthday. Not anywhere near a holiday. Just the end of a month. Equipment checks and maintenance reports and satellite shift changes and- 

He frowns at the last one. 

She wouldn’t mean  _ that.  _

He starts to open his mouth, but she quickly clears her throat, pulling her shoulders back, brushing the last of the flour from her apron. “Well. I’ve got to go find father. He’s the one who actually knows what he’s doing.” 

“Right.” Alan hovers, glancing back towards the door. “I’ll just...see you at dinner, then.” 

She nods. “At dinner.” 

He’s only taken a few steps towards the door when he hears her call his name. He turns back a little too quickly, almost tripping. 

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says. She gives him a smile, soft and warm and maybe - nearly - a little shy. 

“Thanks.” He grins back. “Me too.”


	4. just a kiss away

He remembers how thrilling it was to watch the earth shrink behind him for the first time.

He remembers watching every second of it. It was like a strange, lonely marble made of glistening blue glass, somehow holding everything, everyone, he’d ever loved. He stared in fascination as it was swallowed by inky blackness, growing fainter, dimmer, more strangely intangible. 

He’s used to the sight of it now. It’s part of the routine he knows like clockwork, inside and out. But Tin-Tin hasn’t taken her eyes off it yet. 

“How long will we be able to see it?” she asks. There’s a kind of breathlessness to her question - one he might have felt when he first left the earth’s surface, when space was new and strange and brimming with endless potential.

Now, Alan only glances up at the navigation computer, squinting at the data. “A few more hours."

“It’s...very beautiful,” she says. She settles into the copilot chair. Scott left for the cabin a while ago, hoping to get a few hours of sleep before his shift at the controls.

“Give it another day or two,” Alan says, grinning. “You’ll get tired of it all by then.”

She spins in the chair, looking towards the slipstream of stars before them, at the curtain of dark velvet scattered with pinpricks of silver. She leans forward, her elbows on the console, her chin in her hands. 

There had been plenty of lengthy discussions about bringing her along. It wasn't exactly a _routine_ rescue, setting a course straight for the sun, hoping to catch the crew of the Sun Probe before they met a grisly end at the center of the solar system. But she'd been stubborn, digging her nails into this operation like talons. She'd chipped away at each _no_ and _absolutely not_ and _it's out of the question,_ piercing with quick, careful strikes until his father finally - inevitably - relented.

Her ability to parry Jeff Tracy was finely-tuned enough to be its own branch of science. 

Of course, she hadn't bothered enlightening the rest of them yet. 

“Do you remember the old house? Sneaking out onto the roof?” she asks suddenly, her voice very low beneath the hum of the engines. 

His smile softens. He nods as he glances down, quadruple-checking the course trajectory. “That one was all John’s idea. I just tagged along.” 

He can’t say he’s always gotten along with his older brother, but there are parts of Alan - quiet, confusing parts - that John has always seemed to understand better than the others. When Alan was a child, when he was frightened or angry or hurting, John would take his hand, pulling him through his bedroom window, smuggling him up onto the highest peak of the roof. 

John wouldn’t ask him what was wrong. He knew better than to pick at any wounds. He would recline back, only breaking the gentle silence to point out planets, or trace the shapes of constellations, or track the movement of satellites and space stations as they swept along overhead. 

And Alan would listen, and ask him questions, losing his worries in the dark sky for a while. 

“John wouldn’t let me go with you unless it was my birthday,” she mumbles. 

Her birthday, right before the Bootid peak. The only time John would let her - _anyone_ \- join them. 

He likes the Bootids. They're unpredictable; slow and steady one year, brilliant and wildly thrilling the next. He keeps an eye out for them each year, remembering tired eyes and scratchy shingles against his back.

Remembering lying beside her that last year in the old house, when it was just the two of them left. The summer before she left for Stanford, before he left for Colorado. 

Her face had been pale in the moonlight. Almost angelic. And the shower had been a fierce one, bright white streaks glimmering one after another as they cut burning trails across the sky. 

He glances at her from the corner of his eye. She’s got a thoughtful frown on her lips - slightly parted, like she’s on the edge of saying something, like she can’t quite find the right words. Her face is tilted up, her gaze still locked on the endless expanse of black above them.

Things have shifted between them, slight and gentle, inches at a time. Back at home, she's begun sitting closer. She's lingered beside him, behind him. Before they left, she tucked her legs beneath her on the couch, and when he stretched his arm out along the cushions, fingers barely brushing her shoulder, she didn’t move. 

And now, she’s quiet. An unusual, easy sort of quiet - a kind of quiet that would leave him itching with questions, wondering what she was thinking, what she was feeling, what it _meant,_ if he were anywhere else. 

He thinks, sometimes, that he becomes a different person behind the controls of Thunderbird 3. He sheds his too-tight skin and suddenly the world around him makes sense. The pieces snap into place with clean, neat edges. He works with a precise flow, monitoring the instruments with eyes like a hawk. He’s used to every hum and buzz and beep the ship makes, composing her own strange little symphony. He follows the beats of each perfectly-timed measure. And in the wake of that noise, all the hesitation, the uncertainty, the unending scramble to _prove_ something seems to melt away. 

He asks Tin-Tin for a reading on the strain gauge. She tears her eyes away from the stars to check, and as she rattles off numbers, he swears she fits alongside him like she’s always been here. 

Like she’s _meant_ to be here - an integral part of the design, scribbled on the blueprint when pen was first put to paper. 

Here, on the bird he knows like the back of his hand, where he doesn’t have doubts that gnaw at the edges of every thought, that nip at his ankles. 

Here, where he’s bold and brave and nearly weightless.

Nearly.

* * *

He’s never stopped to think about losing her.

He’s thought about her _leaving._ He’s thought about it plenty of times. He’s run through every detail he can imagine - how she might meet someone who sweeps her off her feet. How he’d sit through her wedding, something in the spring, surrounded by vibrant flowers and little strings of sparkling lights. How they’d all hold champagne flutes, how her dress would look in the late afternoon sun, how there’d be a little glimmer in her eye when she kissed someone else, promising to forge a new life...one far away from the island. Far away from him.

But he hasn’t thought about a world _without_ her. Not until now, when he sits on the flight deck, and he tells her that the escape shuttle is ready if she wants to go. 

_Say yes,_ he thinks, as the words leave his lips. _Say you’ll go._

And just as desperately, just as frantically, an icy twist of fear that stings every nerve it touches: _Stay. Stay. Stay._

“I’m fine,” she says. Her voice doesn’t waver and he wishes he could see her face - the way her eyes narrow, or the way she frowns when she’s so _certain_ of something, when she's giving an answer that seems borne from the center of her bones, from the very core of everything that makes her _her._

His chest aches.

He swallows, thick and heavy.

“You’re sure?” he asks, and his tongue feels like paste in his mouth when he talks. 

“I am,” she answers. 

Of course she won’t run. She isn’t built for running - not at a time like this. 

It would be like the stars flickering out. Like the oceans drying up. 

Like the earth itself crumbling out from under him, leaving him lost, falling, grasping at nothing but air. 

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” she says, so quietly he might have made it up...except he can hear her breath hitch on the very last word, hear the uncertainty dangling at the end of the sentence, like she’s wondering if she shouldn’t have said it at all.

It hits him, then - a tremendous crash. A horrible, wonderful tangle of feelings that curl around him, strangling vines that make each breath burn. 

His heart hammers behind his ribs.

“Tell Scott to stop worrying, by the way.” She slips into a cheerful, friendly tone, a kind of forced lightness. “I know he’s frowning. I can feel it from here.”

He doesn’t turn to look at Scott. Scott’s the furthest thing from his mind right now.

There’s just her.

Only her. 

He’s known. He’s known for years. Maybe he’s known since the moment he met her, since he was a child growing up alongside her, running through cornfields and bickering in the woods. But he’s never given it words, and now, _now,_ in the midst of the mission that might finally rip them apart, he...

“Alan? Are you still there?”

He’s had so many chances.

He’s wasted every last one of them. 

“Tin-Tin.” His voice is a dry, pitiful rasp. There are a thousand thoughts clawing at him, scrambling to the surface, threatening to burst through his skin. 

He can’t say them.

He _can’t._

“Yes?” 

He shakes his head. He looks out at the looming orb of the sun, growing brighter, closer, by the moment. “I just…I need to…”

He glances over his shoulder. Scott’s mumbling under his breath, working through calculations. 

“Alan?” She sounds worried. 

He isn’t weightless. Not now.

He’s terrified.

He holds the armrest in a white-knuckled grip. She calls his name again, but he only stares at the monitor, at the stark reality of a beam that falls too short, of a ship that’s forced to travel too close to danger. At the prospect of failure and what it means for them. 

He’s been taught, again and again, not to let his feelings get in the way of an operation. To expect danger and grief and inevitable, crushing loss, to take it in stride and keep going. 

But he realizes, as he looks at the unyielding data - _maybe it will change, maybe it’s wrong, maybe they’ve missed something and the distance is off and she’ll be fine, she’ll be fine, but it’s not moving, it’s not changing, the numbers are cold and hard and unflinching -_ that he would take a bullet to the chest if it meant he could keep her safe. 

His stomach clenches like it’s caught in a crushing iron fist. 

“Alan? Are you alright?” 

There isn’t a bullet to block. 

There’s suffocating heat, threatening to choke the life from her.

There’s radiation poisoning, eating away at her from the inside out, slow and agonizing.

There’s a vision of a body that isn’t _her_ anymore. A body that won’t laugh or smile or snap at him again. That won’t ever sit close enough for his fingers to brush her shoulder. 

And she’d never know. She’d never know anything he’s thought, anything he’s felt, anything he’s choked down and buried deep and tried so desperately to ignore, because it hurts, it _hurts,_ the way it hangs in his chest, the way it rushes through his veins and settles like silt in his marrow, begging him to say something, say something, _say something-_

“Let’s run the cycle one more time,” Scott says, his voice cutting firm and steady through the flight deck, shaking Alan loose from his thoughts. “I need a clearer read.”

“Right,” she says, a little slowly, clearly questioning the strange silence. “Operating the beam now.”

Alan keeps staring at the monitor, barely watching. Barely thinking. 

_Say something,_ he thinks, again and again, the words falling into step with his stuttering pulse. 

But he can’t.

He doesn’t know how to.

* * *

He feels the shift in the vibrations through the floor. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been laying here. His uniform’s sticking to his skin, and his head’s throbbing so hard he swears his skull’s about to burst in two. He stifles a groan as he braces his arms beneath him, pushing himself off of the floor. The environmental alarms have stopped sounding...or stopped working entirely…and he listens closely, straining to hear anything irregular.

With his palms pressed flat to the floor, he can feel the subtle kick of the retros, the dull rumble as they lock in. 

He grits his teeth, pushing up to his knees, ignoring the angry protest from his muscles. He’s weak, exhausted...but he’s conscious _,_ and his bird’s finally pulling away from the sun, mile by agonizing, endless mile. And the others…

Scott had been passed out when he left the flight deck, slumped over the controls. His breath had been thin and labored in the awful heat. 

Tin-Tin doesn’t look as if she's done much better. 

He stumbles - half-limping, half-dragging - towards her. He gives her shoulder a gentle shake. She doesn’t respond. 

His fingers find her throat. She’s got a strong pulse, and beneath the heat - the scorched metal and the electronics that came just a little too close to melting beyond repair - he swears she still smells like honeysuckle.

It only takes another moment for her eyelids to flutter open. He feels like his chest’s being torn open at the sight, stitch by popping stitch. He lets out a laugh, terrible and choked, as he reaches out, brushing sweat-soaked hair out of her face.

“Hey, you,” he whispers. The words, simple as they are, shake at the edges. 

She sits up, bracing herself against the console with shaking arms. She looks around the lounge, blinking, confused. 

“Scott?” she asks, her own voice barely a croak. 

He shakes his head. “Haven’t checked.” Just the thought of the grueling trip back to the flight deck makes his muscles throb. He slumps against the counter, taking slow, steady breaths, feeling the air cool by fractions of degrees. _There hasn’t been any alert from the life support monitors...but they could be fried...god, he has no idea what else got damaged…_

“Let’s go,” she says, and starts to stand, but she stumbles forward, nearly tripping over him. 

“Easy!” He reaches out to grab her, ignoring the way the whole world spins with the sudden movement. He holds her steady, a hand on each arm. “Easy. I got you.” 

She settles back into the chair, closing her eyes tight. He gives her shoulder a light squeeze, glancing at the door behind him.

“Rest here a minute,” he says. “I’ll go-”

“Alan? Tin-Tin?” The call over the intercom is more static than voice, but he lets out a heavy sigh of relief at the sound. 

“I’m here,” he says. “We’re both fine.” 

“Good. Looks like everything’s locked back in,” Scott says, somehow sounding as clear-headed as ever. “You want me to start a diagnostic?” 

“Yeah. Yes.” Really, he wants to lay on the floor and stay there for a day or two, but his bird’s song is all wrong. There’s something _off_ about her echo, the strained grind of the engines, the heavy groan of the metal hull. He’s used to it all flowing together, quick and easy. And now, after the temperatures she's endured, it's anything but that. 

He hears the intercom click off. His thoughts stutter, falling into place a little slower than he’d like. It’s not just full diagnostics that need running. They need water. They need iodine tablets. They need to check supplies, hunker down for a sixty-five hour trip in a ship that probably wouldn’t make it through the stratosphere, as it is right now...

But they’re alive. All three of them. 

That’s more than he’d hoped for an hour ago. 

_One step at a time._ He can feel the cobwebs clearing from the corners of his thoughts as the temperature in the lounge continues to regulate. Tin-Tin’s sitting up too, her eyes a little sharper, her breath a bit more even-keeled.

“You alright?” he asks, and realizes his hand hasn’t left her shoulder. 

“I think so.” She gives him a half-hearted smile. “I will be. Go help Scott. Let me know what I need to do.” 

He nods, standing up, finding his balance a little more easily this time. He glances back down at her, wanting to make sure the flush is still fading from her skin, that she isn’t nauseous or dizzy…

She’s a mess. An undeniable _mess._ Her skin is slick with a thin sheen of sweat. Her uniform is damp. Her hair is loose, dark, wild, sticking to her throat. She’s gathering it back into a haphazard ponytail, already turning towards the console, ready to tackle what’s sure to be a miserable trip. 

She looks awful. 

She looks painfully, beautifully _alive._

 _“Go.”_ She narrows her eyes when she notices him hovering. “I’m fine…”

And in a moment that he knows his father would never stop lecturing him about...he decides Scott can handle things without him. 

His mouth crashes down against hers, and her eyes go wide. 

She lets out a little noise, something like a squeak, swallowing whatever she was about to say. Her body stiffens, and he hears her sharp breath like it’s been caught in a snare...and when he raises his hand to hold the back of her head, pulling her closer, she lets out something almost like a sigh.

It isn’t a romantic kiss. It isn’t slow, violet-scented, sparkling silver at the edges. It’s hungry. Frantic. It’s built on nothing but adrenaline, the two of them finally crashing together with tremendous force, sending shockwaves rippling through every inch of him. All at once, his hands are tangled in her hair, and touching her face, and tracing the column of her neck, and she raises her own hands to his shoulders, gripping tight, anchoring herself to him. 

_This isn’t the time._ He tells himself that again and again, as he urges her lips apart, and she doesn’t hesitate, drinking him in. _This isn’t the time, they aren’t out of the woods yet, she needs rest, they all need rest..._

Her lips move with his. His every cell feels like it’s been set alight, glowing red, gold, white-hot. 

It might be the only time they have.

She tastes like salt, like sweat, like something he can’t name, something sweet and wild and rich, and when the tip of her tongue brushes his, tentative, testing, he responds eagerly, deepening the kiss. She leans back further, drawing him down, her back bowing as he bends over her, as she bends with him, all but melting into him. 

He isn’t thinking. He doesn't know what he’s doing. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Everything around him feels so far away, so intangible. There’s nothing but space and stars and her, finally her, alive, whole, _here,_ curling her fingers around the fabric of his uniform, arching her back, pulling away to take one shuddering breath before they collide again. 

He pours every ounce of himself into the kiss. Every hidden thought, every masked feeling, hoping they come through somehow, someway. He twines her hair through his fingers, he breathes in her sighs, he presses flush against her and pushes her back against the console. His jaw aches and his head spins and she makes a sound low in her throat, one he feels in his own chest, as she pulls him impossibly close, as she matches his too-frenzied pace, as the world dissolves around them, nothing but dust and fragments and-

There’s a strangled kind of cry from the doorway. Alan jumps away as if he’s been burned. Tin-Tin sits up, hurriedly smoothing her hair, fixing her uniform. 

Scott hovers awkwardly in the doorway. He’s trying, very desperately, to look anywhere but them. “I...uh...was just...” 

He trails off, and he looks down the hallway, just a hint of panic on his usually-calm face. He gestures vaguely. “The auxiliary power...it's gotta be reset…”

 _"Yes._ Auxiliary...yeah." Alan runs a hand through his hair, nodding a little too fervently. “On it. Let’s...let’s go do that.”

Scott lingers. He turns left. Then he turns right. Then he turns left again, and furrows his brow, and mumbles something about voltage testers below his breath, disappearing down the hall. 

Alan takes a step forward, not sure if he’s the one reeling, or if the room is wavering around him. His heart’s thundering hard and heavy enough to rattle his bones. He isn’t entirely sure what just happened...he thinks he must have imagined it, because it _couldn’t_ have happened, not like that, not that quickly, that suddenly...

He turns back, looking at Tin-Tin. She’s sitting with her back ramrod straight, her shoulders pulled tight, appearing a little too interested in something on the console.

“Tin-Tin,” he says, very quietly. “I-“

“Go on,” she says. Or whispers, voice hovering on every word like they're brand new to her. “I’ll...we’ll...”

She exhales heavily. The air between them feels like frozen crystals of ice, strange and sparkling, thin enough to shatter. He’s surprised he doesn’t see her breath clouding in the air. 

“It can wait,” she says at last. 

_Waiting._ That’s the problem, the crux of it, the thing that leaves him stumbling and stuttering and making a mess out of everything he touches. _Waiting_ gives him room to think. _Thinking_ gets him all knotted up. The knots pull tighter, and he says the wrong thing, does the wrong thing, digs the trench between them just a little deeper...

It can’t wait. _He_ can’t wait. Not after this. 

But there are sixty-odd hours worth of empty space between them and home.

 _Plenty of time,_ he tells himself.

Plenty of time if he makes good on it. 

For now, he turns away, jogging down the hall after Scott. 


End file.
